Magdalena Kaufmann starts this book by identifying three
problems regarding the meaning of imperatives. First, clause types
are pairs of form types and function types, and for
imperative-sentence form types, ORDER is the
prototypical function. Second, the imperatives of a given language
are generally associated with a range of speech act types,
including COMMAND, WARNING, PROHIBITION, WISH, REQUEST,
ADVICE, and PERMISSION. And in many
languages, they can also function on a sub-speech-act level, having
a similar function to the antecedent of conditionals. Third,
imperatives in many languages are associated with functions that
are tied to universal quantification (COMMAND, ORDER,
REQUEST, WISH) as well as functions that are tied to
existential quantification (PERMISSION, CONCESSION).
The goal of the book is to present a proposal for the semantics of
the imperative clause type that can account for these three
problems.

In Chs. 2 and 3, K argues that imperatives express propositions
and therefore have truth values, 'but come with an additional
presuppositional meaning component that makes them unfit for
assertive use and shield the truth value from being
conversationally accessible' (57). K makes a plausible connection
between imperatives such as Close the door! and
performative modal declaratives such as You must/should close
the door!, and proposes that semantically, the two are
equivalent. As supporting evidence that imperatives are not that
different from declaratives, K notes that imperatives answer
questions (Q: Should I go to the reception? A:
Don't go!), just as declaratives do (Q: Is it
raining? A: Yes, it is raining.); just as one
can lie with a declarative, one can make the addressee believe
something that is known to the speaker to be incorrect with an
imperative (saying To go to Harlem, take the B train!
when the speaker knows that going to Harlem requires taking the A
train); and just as a declarative can be turned into a question, an
imperative can be turned into a question in some languages (in
German, a rhetorical WH-question such as Where is it that you
should put the flower pot? can be formed with an imperative
verb). As far as I can tell, these are novel observations about the
connection between imperatives and declaratives and provide strong
support for the position that the semantic type of imperatives is
propositional rather than property-like (cf. Portner 2007).
Adopting Kratzer's (1981) approach to the semantics of
modality, K proposes that imperatives contain a necessity modal
operator with two conversational background arguments—a modal base
f and an ordering source g—and a temporal
argument that defines the interval at which the event/state
expressed by the imperative is required to hold. An imperative θ!
is thus interpreted as a function that maps a world w
to the truth value 1 if θ is true in all worlds returned by
f and g in the defined interval.

What f and g of the imperative modal
operator look like is discussed in Ch. 4. For typical imperatives
that express orders, commands, and requests, K proposes that
f is what the speaker and hearer jointly take to be
possible future courses of events, the common ground, and
g is what the speaker orders. An imperative such as
Get up! means 'According to what I order you to do, it
is necessary that you get up now'. For imperatives expressing
wishes such as Enjoy the film, g is proposed to be
what the speaker wants with f as the common ground.
The presuppositional meaning component of imperatives is also
discussed in this chapter. K proposes that this component consists
of three presuppositions, which are termed as epistemic authority,
ordering source restriction, and epistemic uncertainty. According
to the epistemic authority constraint, imperatives must combine
with conversational backgrounds on which the speaker has epistemic
authority. By definition, a speaker has epistemic authority on the
common ground, f, and also on what she orders or what
she wants. The epistemic uncertainty constraint requires that the
speaker believe that the content of the imperative is possible but
not necessary. If the speaker is sure that θ will happen or will
not happen, then issuing an imperative θ! is infelicitous (#I
know you won't go to confession. So go...

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